Titus the Fox: To Marrakech and Back

Titus the Fox: To Marrakech and Back is a platformer about a fox who sets off across Europe and North Africa to rescue his kidnapped girlfriend. The gameplay rests on one distinctive feature: the hero can't defeat enemies by jumping on their heads or shooting them, but he can pick up crates, barrels, and all sorts of objects to throw at foes or use as stepping stones. Most levels are therefore, in a sense, spatial puzzles where you need to carry the right object to the right place to reach an otherwise unreachable platform. Add flying enemies, chasms, and time pressure, and the game constantly alternates between thinking and pure action.

Technically it's a typical representative of French production of the era. The graphics are colorful and stylized in a slightly comic-book manner, the settings shift from city streets through desert landscapes to strange dreamlike levels, and the screen scrolls smoothly. The sound is sparser, the game leaning more on effects than a rich musical score, and the controls have noticeable momentum that takes a while to get used to. It's exactly this control responsiveness combined with strict enemy placement that makes Titus the Fox one of the toughest platformers available on DOS.

The game was released on numerous platforms and became one of the signature titles of its European publisher, known for churning out colorful, demanding action games for home computers. At the time it was received with mixed feelings: praised for its inventive object-carrying system, criticized for its unforgiving difficulty and unpleasant enemy placement. Today it's a title for patient players who enjoy old European platformers with a distinctive personality of their own. Anyone who chews through the first levels will find surprisingly cleverly built environments and a game that forces more thought than it seems at first glance. It's exactly this combination of charm and toughness that makes it a title still remembered in Europe with decidedly mixed feelings.